[Rant] Apple's Library Storage Management

[Guest]

So I was in OS X/macOS and was attempting to get my music library setup and then I took a look under the hood a little bit to see what was going on. As it turns out, iTunes copies all of the music from your library onto the OS drive. So for example, if I have a dedicated separate drive for storing my music library (let’s just say it’s a large library like 200GB or something idk) and I want the library to show up in iTunes, iTunes first copies the entire library to the iTunes media folder and then the library shows up. 

 

Fucking. Why. That doesn’t make any fucking sense. That is data duplication as the default option if it’s not on the OS drive. The default option is to straightforward, copy the entire library instead of simply just initializing it where it stands? Why not just point to the library and then use it from there? Not everyone is going to be using the OS drive to store all of their data. Such a basic situation and you have such a ridiculous issue like this? Wow. 

 

And it's worse than that. So let’s say for example, you want to sync about 7GB worth of music to your iPhone. iTunes only allows you to sync music to your phone from the iTunes media folder. So you are stuck with by default duplicating your data if you want to sync any music to your phone as well. 

 

I heard they came out with a new file system just to get rid/remove issues like this. What a fucking joke. 

[Blade of Grass]

iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Blade of Grass said:

iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"

THANK YOU SO MUCH OMFG!~!!!!!!!

 

My point still remains valid though. I mean, that shouldn't be the default option, like WTFH?!?!?

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, IAmLamp said:

THANK YOU SO MUCH OMFG!~!!!!!!!

 

My point still remains valid though. I mean, that shouldn't be the default option, like WTFH?!?!?

I disagree, it should be. A lot of people would likely drag their music into iTunes when copying from an external drive and then not realize that they didn't actually copy the music to their computer but rather just pointers to the external drive.

[Blade of Grass]

3 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

THANK YOU SO MUCH OMFG!~!!!!!!!

 

My point still remains valid though. I mean, that shouldn't be the default option, like WTFH?!?!?

I think the idea is to help you you keep your files accessible. Consider importing them from a USB key or CD etc, when you eject it (if it didn't copy them over) your media files would no longer be accessible. 

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by @djdwosk97

[Guest]

26 minutes ago, Blade of Grass said:

I think the idea is to help you you keep your files accessible. Consider importing them from a USB key or CD etc, when you eject it (if it didn't copy them over) your media files would no longer be accessible. 

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by @djdwosk97

Eh... we could go back and forth on this. I'll just leave there and say thanks, it seems to work perfectly now. 

[dalekphalm]

9 hours ago, IAmLamp said:

Eh... we could go back and forth on this. I'll just leave there and say thanks, it seems to work perfectly now. 

Remember that the majority of iTunes users aren't tech enthusiasts or particularly advanced users. The likelihood of them using a dedicated network drive or secondary HDD for music storage is pretty low. Only a small minority of users would use iTunes (or any music player) like this.

 

The option is there to disable if you have an usual setup (which, you do). You can also change the location of your Library and iTunes Media folder too, and you can place them on the same drive as you would normally store your music anyway. Not saying you should do that, specifically, but it could allow a different, yet similar, workflow and storage.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Remember that the majority of iTunes users aren't tech enthusiasts or particularly advanced users. The likelihood of them using a dedicated network drive or secondary HDD for music storage is pretty low. Only a small minority of users would use iTunes (or any music player) like this.

 

The option is there to disable if you have an usual setup (which, you do). You can also change the location of your Library and iTunes Media folder too, and you can place them on the same drive as you would normally store your music anyway. Not saying you should do that, specifically, but it could allow a different, yet similar, workflow and storage.

Well I mean it doesn't have to be a dedicated drive for just a music library, I mean if you wanted to get into a more realistic "noob" type of situation, you could. I mean I've seen a lot of people put their data on external drives just so they can bring it to and from places easily. 

 

Also, on the second part, not everyone will want to be forced to be using Apple's layout/format of their iTunes media folder. Some people will have different types of organizational layouts. 

 

Either way, I got it working thanks to @Blade of Grass 

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, IAmLamp said:

Well I mean it doesn't have to be a dedicated drive for just a music library, I mean if you wanted to get into a more realistic "noob" type of situation, you could. I mean I've seen a lot of people put their data on external drives just so they can bring it to and from places easily. 

 

Also, on the second part, not everyone will want to be forced to be using Apple's layout/format of their iTunes media folder. Some people will have different types of organizational layouts. 

 

Either way, I got it working thanks to @Blade of Grass 

Indeed not everyone will like the way iTunes organizes files and folders. Fortunately, you can choose whether iTunes keeps its folders organized, or whether it'll just watch the folders, and let you organize them.

 

It's certainly not the best program ever, and there's far less customization then, say, Foobar2000, but it's still not terrible.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Indeed not everyone will like the way iTunes organizes files and folders. Fortunately, you can choose whether iTunes keeps its folders organized, or whether it'll just watch the folders, and let you organize them.

 

It's certainly not the best program ever, and there's far less customization then, say, Foobar2000, but it's still not terrible.

On the note of Foobar2000, I've heard of it before, but I don't know what it is exactly. Would you mind explaining? Also, is it like the most favored tool out there or something? I've just been getting away/by with stock material from the OS and what not. 

[79wjd]

19 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Indeed not everyone will like the way iTunes organizes files and folders. Fortunately, you can choose whether iTunes keeps its folders organized, or whether it'll just watch the folders, and let you organize them.

 

It's certainly not the best program ever, and there's far less customization then, say, Foobar2000, but it's still not terrible.

 

13 minutes ago, IAmLamp said:

On the note of Foobar2000, I've heard of it before, but I don't know what it is exactly. Would you mind explaining? Also, is it like the most favored tool out there or something? I've just been getting away/by with stock material from the OS and what not. 

It's just a fully customizable audio player that basically lets you do/customize whatever you want. I personally don't like it as i personally find that iTunes suits all of my needs (I'm one of the few that doesn't have an issue with iTunes), so I have no desire to dick around with Foobar setting it up "just how I like it".

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, IAmLamp said:

On the note of Foobar2000, I've heard of it before, but I don't know what it is exactly. Would you mind explaining? Also, is it like the most favored tool out there or something? I've just been getting away/by with stock material from the OS and what not. 

As @djdwosk97 says, Foobar2000 is a fully customizable music player. Out of the box, it's not much different then say, Windows Media Player, but it has much better codec support (and is expandable with plugins, etc). But it's biggest feature is that you can pretty much customize the UI entirely to your preferences.

 

This is great for tinkerers, but it's fucking horrible for people who want a more turn-key "out of the box" style experience. For those people, something like iTunes (Or one of my favourite players: Zune desktop player) is going to be far superior.

 

If you want to see some of the possibilities, go check out the Tek Syndicate tutorial videos:

A note on the last video: It's pretty old, so I have no idea how accurate/valid the info is on syncing iOS devices. Furthermore, since he was using an iPod, iPhones may not work at all with syncing.

 

But the first two videos will give you an idea of what kind of things you can accomplish with it.